Are screens taking over our lives?
Data Scavenger Hunt
Find answers to the following questions using the visual above:
By 2021 how much time was the average user spending on mobile internet every day?
What medium (for example: TV, radio, mobile internet) had the biggest change in media usage over the past decade?
By 2021, about how many minutes a day was the average American using internet (mobile + desktop)?
Describe one trend you see in the visual above.
Facebook didn’t even exist until 2004. In 2011 the average American spent less than 30 minutes on the internet on their phone. What is the average amount of minutes spent on mobile internet today? Based on the chart, predict the amount of minutes a day Americans will spend on screens in 10 years.
Big Brain Questions
Answer these questions by yourself using your brain and the links below:
What do you think is the best explanation for the trend you described in the visual above.
in 2020, driven in no small part by the pandemic, Americans spent more than an average 1,300 hours on social media according to a new study from Uswitch. Let’s not forget that Americans have always used the media. What do you think people did with all that time before the invention of social media?
According to data from DataReportal, the average American spends 6 hours and 59 minutes looking at a screen every day. This is slightly above average and over 1 hour longer than the British who average 5 hours and 47 minutes of screen time per day (see map below*). But it is nearly four hours less than the biggest screen-time consumers, South Africans, who average around 9 hours and 38 minutes a day. How does your own personal internet usage compare to the visual above?
Nearly a third of Americans said they are online “almost constantly” in 2019, a statistic that has risen substantially across age groups since the study was conducted the year before. Is that good or bad news?
In the 1990s with the advent of widespread internet usage many critics anticipated that we would become the most educated and knowledgeable generation in American history. Evaluate whether those critics were correct.
Write and Discuss
Take ten minutes to write about the question at the top of the page and then discuss with your classmates.
Act on your Learning
Measure your media usage for one week and determine your daily usage by medium. Share your results in class or online. Then contact President Joe Biden and let him know what he should do about American media usage.
Get Creative
Unless they were very early adopters, your great grandparents never had internet access. Wow. Imagine there was a world-wide power outage and everyone had to spend a day without internet. Make a creative creative response to the scenario above.
Learn More
Read this Vox Recode article about how much time Americans spend online.
